


Invisible Lovers

by uninvitedtrashcan



Category: Le città invisibili | Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino, Marco Polo (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 05:17:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17155949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uninvitedtrashcan/pseuds/uninvitedtrashcan
Summary: In which nights spent with Jingim are, for Polo, nights blooming with tales of lovers, lovers of all natures, so that the Prince might know himself—and his new bedmate—better.





	1. [Part One]

**Author's Note:**

> Format is going to be loosely adhering to 'Invisible Cities', but no prior familiarity with Italo's work is required. It's been impossible, reading it at the same time as rewatching MP, not to get the itch to combine them. 
> 
> The first chapter shall be the closest to the IC opening; the rest shall all be much more liberal in referencing it.

Jingim does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the lovers witnessed on his expeditions, but the heir to the khanate does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any of his wives or concubines. In the lives of lovers, there is a moment that follows the first conquest, and in the afterglow of realising what we have done on bedsheets and tabletops, melancholy sets teeth in. There is a sense of emptiness, marred by frustration, of realising you are no more complete than you were before, and perhaps no closer to the soul beside you, a dizziness of vertigo as you perceive there yet remains an abyss into which to fall. Their eyes are eyes you know a little better, but understand now only through _more_ lenses, not with any greater clarity. You realise that vulnerability is not the keystone to a person’s whole, and that all those enamoured faces you have seen before, gazing at you or at their loved ones, know not so much as they pretend to know as they stand there, armed with the atlas of their bleeding heart. But the human heart is its own city; corruption has always been inherent to it, and fucks by candlelight have always come with more than that simple concept of ‘love’. Politicos and schemers and pretenders have all fucked in the name of something more, have taken that belief and dirtied it with something inescapable, yet seductive. We are no different. We, tied as we are to our lives, our loyalties and grudges, cannot venture to witness this kingdom of aching. Only in Marco Polo’s accounts was Jingim able to discern, through the gestures and touches destined to end in betrayal or entrapment, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the distance’s dilution.


	2. Lovers & Memory 1

Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Throat, a city with pavements of silver perceivable only in the rain. It is a melancholy place, one wet in taste and in feeling. The streets house only young lovers, only the newly devoted, enraptured as they are with one another and the sensation of dual breathing. They do not inhabit this city, but its double, just as silver but twice as shiny. There is rain, yes, but it is of a different feeling.  
This same city can be found in any place in the world, be it city or suburbs, pavement or dirt track. The special quality of Throat is to be found only in the gutter, as away the rain washes, littered with discarded tissues and wrappers. It is here the material of those firsts coagulates, sticking together, forming masses that shall later be unpicked through tears and more wine, the beauty of the day lost in this hollow artefact of sticky fingers, lips ripe for kissing.  


	3. Lovers & Memory 2

When a man rides a long time through regions, wild or familiar, he feels the desire for home comforts. He finds these not in his chambers nor with his countrymen, though they do well to pass the time. He will find his mind turning to a city, a city defined by a person. This is not the city of Clear. He takes up idolatry to assuage the aching, their face (which, though he may dedicate a great many hours to it, is always just out of sight, even with his eyes closed) painted on the insides of his heart.  
Riding many years onwards, he searches for them in every corner, alley, sewer, and skyline. They can be found, but only in fragments, among whores and princesses, loyal servants and rivals with keen eyes. These fragments do no good, or more often that not, do the opposite, serving as reminders of what his present company is not. Often, a man will find himself spending, trying, burning, all in the name of reaching the city in his heart.   
The man rides to the city of Clear. In the city of Clear, a man may find this lover he is seeking, always happening upon them by chance, though the meeting is guaranteed. And in the space of not more than a few minutes, he shall find that though this is their body, their voice speaking, this too is a fragment.  
Every man must come to the city of Clear. In his heart, he comes here every morning, when upon awakening he finds a body next to him, alien, strange, and for all his riding, unreachable.


End file.
